Monitoring and detecting contaminants in the environment has become increasingly important as the population becomes more environmentally conscious. Federal, state and local government agencies have recognized the need to monitor levels of pollutants in the environment quickly and accurately. For example, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (U.S.E.P.A.) has recently indicated that rapidly acquiring environmental data of pollution is important, and even necessary, to adequately warn the public of potentially harmful conditions in the environment.
Many locations, however, do not have or are not equipped with devices which are suitable for monitoring environmental conditions. Such locations may not have monitoring devices or may not be equipped to support monitoring devices for a number of reasons. For example, electrical and/or telephone lines may not be present or are scarce at a particular location, thus making it difficult to support monitoring equipment at that location.
Even if electrical and telephone lines are present at a particular location, it may be that monitoring devices have not been provided at the particular location, because the environmental condition of interest was the result of an unexpected occurrence. For example, a grass fire recently torched California's biggest pile of used tires in Tracy, Calif. Over seven million tires burned and smoldered in a gravel pit for over six months. During this time, residents near and far were concerned about the byproducts from the burning tires contaminating the groundwater and the air. Since this fire was not expected, equipment to monitor the effects of the fire were not present at the site. Even after the need to monitor the site became apparent, monitoring the effects of the fire on the environment was difficult because few electrical and telephone lines were present to support monitoring equipment.
Conventional methods have been used to monitor environmental conditions. However, many of these conventional methods could be improved. For example, in one illustrative monitoring method, an air pollution data collection device at a first location collects raw air pollution data. An operator at the first location receives the raw data from the data collection device in a print out form and transmits the form to a technician at another location. The technician receives the raw data and produces a graph from it. The graph is proofed and then transmitted by facsimile to persons who are interested in viewing the graph. The time between the collection of the data and the receipt of the graph by the interested viewers can be 24 hours or more. The graph can be sent to the interested viewers at least once per day so that they can monitor the environmental condition at the first location on a regular basis.
While conventional environmental monitoring processes such as this one can be performed relatively quickly, there are a number of disadvantages to this type of monitoring process. First, the interested viewer views the graph at a quasi-random time, because the graph is received by the interested viewer at a quasi-random time. The time at which the graph is received by the interested viewer depends on how quickly the operator and the technician perform their duties. Second, the graph cannot be easily shared by other interested viewers at different locations. In some conventional methods, the graphed data is separately transmitted to each interested viewer by facsimile. Transmitting graphed data in this manner is very time consuming and cumbersome. Third, although graphed data can be generated within 24 hours of data collection, this period of time may be too long to be useful or helpful in some instances. For example, if the concentration of a substance in the supply of drinking water in an area has risen to potentially harmful levels, the people living in the area need to know this as soon as possible so that they can take appropriate action. Finally, technicians or other qualified personnel are required on a continuous basis to process the data.
Accordingly, there is a need for an improved method and instrumentation system for monitoring an environmental condition.